Monday, January 7, 2008

Why Mima, Why Now?

Why Mima, Why Now?

Economics, the desire for a life change, kids growing up,fulfilling a dream, or all, in the aggregate, whatever the reason, on December30, 2006, while driving home from visiting family in Arizona at Christmas Susan turned to me in the car and said, "I'm ready to go". I knew immediately what she meant and so it began.We got home to Idaho and began looking for a boat.

The biggest challenge living in Idaho and wanting a cruising sailboat was traveling to areas with boats to look at.I traveled to Seattle, Portland, San Diego and Puerto Escondido, Mexico to look at potential boats. The other challenge for us was trying to figure out what we wanted in a sailboat.Our entire boating experience had been powerboats. We had owned a number of powerboats, the largest being a 33 foot Sea Ray cabin cruiser. As such we were comfortable with navigation, anchoring and basic boatmanship but we had never owned a sailboat and our sailing experience was the grand total of a few days on my best friend's boat.

None- the- less, I flew to Panama to see the boat in May2007 and after a few days with the prior owners and being on board I decided to pull the trigger and bought Mima. In the time between deciding to go cruising and when I visited Mima our friends had decided that they were not going to be able to leave and consequently we were free to begin cruising in Panama on the Caribbean side. Susan and I traveled to the boat in October for two weeks to get acquainted with her and try to prepare for our return as a family in January 2008.

I began turning on systems and troubleshooting as well as performing basic maintenance. Susan began to provision and after innumerable trips to the store and untold hours on my part trying to figure out how things work three weeks later we untied from the dock and left.

We left having read everything we could on sailing but with only a grand total of 10 hours of sailing experience. We know we will make many rookie mistakes but we are committed to learning and living.